Servo Magazine (March 2008)

Back to Basics

As a mechanical engineering student, Evan has been learning about things like how Bessel functions are the eigenfunctions of the Sturm-Liouville Equations that can be used to describe heat conduction in nonrectangular geometries, and how computational methods like the Newton-Raphson method can be used to find the solution to large nonlinear systems. Such highbrow concepts in engineering — however interesting they might sound — can only be mastered with a firm grasp on the fundamentals of ...

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Article Comments

Mind/Iron

3D printing has become so good that the printed prototypes outlive their usefulness. Most of my 3D printed plastic prototypes serve their purpose for perhaps five minutes and then end up in landfills along with lots of empty filament spools. ABS plastic and even so-called biodegradable polylactic acid (PLA) will probably survive decades in the environment. Isn’t it time to find ways to repurpose this technology to decrease its footprint?